Waking Up Alive
by JSavant
Summary: Finnick Odair is a mystery, an engima. What lies behind that flamboyant exterior? And what happened in his past? Read within to find out . . . Please R&R if you can!
1. Prologue: Secrets in the Dark

Disclaimer: I do not own ANY of these lovable, endearing characters. Suzanne Collins is the genius who created them (with her wonderful books _The Hungers Games_, _Catching Fire_, and the forthcoming _Mockingjay_), and I am merely an interloper in her wonderful creation of a world. Finnick, Katniss, Annie, and all the rest appear at different times and different forms in this story, and everything I write here is done out of love for the original characters and story (and also for the craft of writing itself).

Please enjoy this piece of fiction lighting on Finnick's thoughts and past, and many of the events within are my own interpretations of what _could _have happened to Finnick Odair before we met him as the flamboyant playboy turned rebel in the book _Catching Fire_. Believe me, it's going to be a thrill ride -- with some maybe some sugar cubes thrown in there for good measure. ;)

* * *

Prologue:

Secrets in the Dark

Less than a week has passed since the Seventy-fifth Hunger Games, the third Quarter Quell, ended with a bang by means of an explosion, yet I sit by her bedside where she still lies, still sits, staring straight ahead at nothing, her eyes and ears closed to all the world around her as if everything else but the cage of her own mind has ceased to exist. Somehow, I envy her for being able to tear away from reality when it is the most dire time of all for everyone in Panem.

Katniss Everdeen, the girl on fire, now seems only a hollow shell of the girl she once was.

_Haymitch was too hasty, _I think, cursing that wily fox for being so rash with his secret-telling. I had seen the way she had attacked him, fingernails raking skin like the claws of a feral wildcat, when she realized that she had been only a pawn of the rebellion -- and that Peeta had been too.

Peeta Mellark . . . I know their full story now, of course, though I had always had my suspicions. For a young couple in love, they had been awfully careful with one another -- almost as if they kept their passions cooled purposely, especially in regard of Peeta to Katniss; more than once, I had seen the temptation in his eyes to simply envelop her in his arms, swallow her with his eyes and with his lips, yet somehow always resist to go too far and too soon. Vainly, I hope that the Capitol will not taint him now that he is in their clutches. Such a man should not die such a needless death . . .

Especially when the person who loves him most sits before me, forever lost until she hears the simple words: _He lives, and he's coming back to you._

Even I, once a dreamer and a romantic, find it hard to believe that such news will ever come.

Yet I'm willing to spin such a tale -- just so that she can come back to a glimmer of herself. Life goes on, she will find; that was a lesson I had to learn early when my own love story shattered like a glass orb imploding from the inside out.

"Katniss," I start slowly, running a hand through my bronze hair, "you can't continue doing this to yourself."

_You're slowly dying from the inside out. Can't you see it?_

Her grey eyes, today dark like a storm cloud looming over the horizon, flash to mine for an instant, a spark of awareness awakening in her gaze -- but then, just as quickly, the fire sputters out, and I am looking at a shell again.

"Shut up," she mutters. Her hands are clenched so tightly together in her lap that the fingers have run white.

"Beating yourself up doesn't accomplish anything," I say smoothly, the well-rehearsed words flowing easily out of my mouth. I don't know how many times I have spoken them in the last few days, but my lips shape easily around the familiar words that mean nothing to me personally. I am a masochist of my emotions, and I fully embrace it as I always have. What a hypocrite I am since I have never even followed the advice I am trying to give her.

Katniss mumbles something under her breath, and I think I hear a few curse words mixed in with the senseless jabber.

"What?" I ask, certain I have missed something either terribly funny or incredibly sad.

"I'm sure you beat yourself up all the time over Annie," she says, surprising me -- and sending my heart pounding and my mind reeling.

_Annie._

I grit my teeth, my hand clenching into a tight balled fist on my thigh. Somehow, with Katniss being nearly catatonic ever since coming from the remnants of the Quell's Arena, I had managed to avoid thinking of the girl whose fate I did not yet know. Sleeping pills always helped at night when nightmares stalked, of course, and I was using them constantly to drown myself in a stupor.

Narrowing my eyes at Katniss, I fight the urge to hit her for dredging up the best possible weapon against me. "You don't know anything," I hiss, surprising myself with the venom in my voice.

My tone surprises her too. She actually looks at me, almost curious. "What are you so afraid of?" she asks quietly.

"I could ask you the same thing," I throw back angrily. This won't be about me, I won't allow it; this is about _her _and her emotional problems. Not mine.

"I'm not afraid," she says softly -- but even I hear the tremble in her voice and the quake to her eyelids as more tears are left unshed.

"All right," I sigh after a moment. I'll play her game. "Everything's peachy, we're both totally invincible, and fear is something only lesser mortals feel."

A smile flickers across her face. It is the first time her lips have shaped into anything but a flat, dead line in many days. "I didn't say that."

"Yeah, but you were trying to _think _it, weren't you?" _I try to think those things all the time. Too bad I can never seem to fool myself._

Now she looks at me, and I know the interrogation is ready to be turned on me once again. I anticipate it, ready to dodge any bullets and resist any surrender.

Yet the girl surprises me when she speaks. "I miss Peeta," she whispers, her voice breaking when she reaches his name. She doesn't cry, but I know both our hearts -- our sad, fragile hearts -- are crying for her.

Crying for hope. Crying for absolution. Crying for vengeance. Crying for sanity.

_Sanity is what I wish for most of all -- for myself and others._

"I know," I manage to say quietly. Now I dread the unforgivably weak words I am about to say. "I . . . I miss . . . I miss Annie too."

Katniss looks at me now, her gaze open and aware, and I know that -- for the first time -- we share an accord in some way.

"Tell me about her." The words are not a request -- but a demand.

"No." The word is as much a denial as it is an escape.

Her eyes scrutinize me, and I glare her down. My temper is rising steadily, and even I don't know half the reason why.

"What do you fight so hard to hide?" she asks now. "You lived in District 4. Your life can't have been so bad before the Games interfered."

_That's where you're wrong._

My reaction surprises even myself.

"What do you think, Katniss?" My voice is taunting and rising in a blazing tempo of barely constrained fury; my face sneers as if yelling actually makes me feel good inside. I know it is useless and cruel, to yell at a girl who has already lost so much, but it is the not the first time I had hurt someone far more fragile than myself. I have too much experience on that front. "That I haven't had my own share of heartaches? That I had some _glamorous _life back in District 4? Stop fooling yourself. You aren't the only one to have suffered."

My verbal attack doesn't faze her, however, and I am left to cool my own tempers instead of indulging in more word lashes and clipped sentence parries.

_Too bad. I was expecting a fight. You let me down, Katniss._

"All right," she says after a few minutes' time -- time she gave me to calm my temper before she spoke again and gave me any reason to shout and rant and rave. "I don't know much about District 4. It's not as if the Capitol ever really tried to get the districts to know about each other beyond the Games. That was too much of a possible threat."

Slowly, I nod. We both know that the Capitol actually relished the type of control that made the districts strangers to each other for so many decades. That lack of knowledge was what had kept the Capitol from the threat of rebellion for so long.

_Until we got smart again._

I cannot stall with my own thoughts for long, however, because Katniss is looking at me again, waiting . . . waiting for me to tear down the walls myself. In this room, silence is a burden -- yet it is also a motivation -- a motivation to give me yet more reason to let loose the flood of words that hammer at my heart each day.

I have hid behind lies for so long that, for a moment, I have to wonder if I even know what truth is anymore.

Now I know that, irrevocably, the time for secrets is over. Now it is time for the telling of truth, whether I like it or not. I sigh and fold my hands loosely together until I am looking again at the still-fragile girl sitting before me. If she has managed to start coming back from the fire, then so can I.

I don't know how I will feel once I am past the flames that have been licking at my insides for so long.

"Let me tell you a story, Katniss . . ."

* * *

Okay, that was straightforward, wasn't it? Well, there's more where that came from . . .

Anyway, please read and comment! I love hearing from other _Hunger Games _fans, so feel free to comment on anything you see fit.

I promise the first chapter of this saga will be up as soon as I finish it. :)


	2. Chapter 1: The Chosen

Okay, here we go again. Chapter 1 is up sooner than I planned because of enthusiasm I did not expect. Thank you to those who reviewed (here and on Goodreads, where this story is also posted). This chapter brings us back ten years into the past, where we meet a fourteen-year-old Finnick Odair in District 4 -- and all you Hunger Games fans know what's coming after this. ;) I'm hoping it will be exciting and exhilirating to you as you read Finnick's story.

Disclaimer: I do not own _The Hunger Games _or _Catching Fire_, nor do I own any of the characters or properties related to this book series. They all belong to Suzanne Collins, the author. The story herein is entirely fictional and of my own deviation, relating a what-if past of Finnick Odair, and it is meant to be taken for what it is: a fan fiction written by a fan who was so intrigued by this character that she _had _to write her own version of events while she waited for the truth to come from Suzanne Collins's own work. I expectantly look forward to that day when I can read about Finnick's past as Suzanne Collins intended it to be told and written -- but, in the meantime, I have to settle for my fan fiction and the crazy imagination I have.

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Chapter 1:

The Chosen

_Ten years before . . ._

The sun hits my eyes almost as a warning, and my eyelids flutter open as my green gaze takes in the light pouring through the crack in the window just beyond my head. I do not want to think. I do not want to move. But I must. Today is the Reaping.

I stand from my makeshift cot -- merely a tangle of blankets lying over a discarded mattress I managed to find in a garbage heap -- and stretch. As usual, the shack is empty in the morning. That is how it usually is -- at least, until my Mother has her customers, who can come at any time of day.

My lips pull down into a scowl. _Customers_. That is a nice word for them when they are simply--

Then I hear sounds -- the smooth rustle of clothing, the soft shuffle of footsteps as if someone is trying to sneak away without being noticed. I duck down into a crouch and hide behind the bed. If anyone comes out and looks in my direction, he will not be able to see me -- but I will be able to see him.

A few seconds later, my mother's door opens -- and out steps a man, straightening the collar of a slightly wrinkled white shirt that looks Capitol-made since it is hardly sewn or knit as our District 4 wares are. I narrow my eyes in dislike.

_A customer, _my thoughts hiss. If I could get away with it, I would tackle the man right now and beat him for what he has been doing with my mother all night -- but, no, I cannot. My hands clench into fists, the nails biting into my palms, and I can simply watch as the man departs with my doing nothing.

Now it is time to check in with my mother -- my morning ritual -- to see if she is still whole, if she still lives, if another night of duty hasn't finally eaten her up alive.

I walk to the doorway and stand outside, hesitant. Then, as quietly as I can manage, I open the door and poke my head inside . . .

There my mother lies, her red-gold hair lying in wavy tangles over her face, a thin sheet covering her pale skin. Her bare shoulder peeks out at me, and I cringe when I think that, when I walked in from my late shift at the wharf, that man had already been here. I thank a higher power for not hearing what had likely been going on since then I _really _would have done something drastic and stupid.

Whether I like it or not, though, this is our life, my mother's and mine. My worrying for her. Her barely noticing me because I am simply a boy accidentally born through one of her customers' visits.

I have never known my father. For all I know, he is someone I see every day down at the wharf - perhaps a tanned fisherman who bears my wide smile and bronze hair - or maybe I am the progeny of some Capitol-born prat who often visits to get his share of pleasure from District 4.

I do not know -- and I likely wouldn't want to know. Knowing would only make me sick.

The door closes, and I walk away. At times like these, I can barely stand to look at my mother.

Yet even I, a child of only fourteen, know that she really had no choice in this cruel, cruel world.

* * *

The Capitol will tell you differently, but know this: District 4 does not only deal in the fish business. It deals in the trade of women too.

I don't know how it is in other districts. Perhaps women never have to degrade themselves because of poverty or hunger, but here there seems to be no other option. Marriage and family offer a woman security -- but, here, there are simply too many women to guarantee that all of them will be safely married off. For those females who find themselves husband-less after the age of twenty-one, there is only one other option: the lower district . . .

Better known as the harlots' quarters.

The Capitol and its assigned Peacekeepers do not allow illegal poaching (whether it be of game from the forest or fish from the sea), yet they allow the indignity of these women who are merely trying to survive in any way they can. It is well-known in the district that the Peacekeepers are the lower district's best customers. No one says anything, however; everyone simply looks the other way, pretending the dark and horrendous problems of this world do not exist.

It is much easier to create a lie in your mind than to see the truth for yourself.

* * *

The Reaping is almost regarded as a holiday in the Capitol. To us, in District 4, however, the Reaping is a day when we are free from work but also a day held in infamy. It is simply a reminder of past failures as much as it is a preclude to the funerals to come.

Two tributes, a male and a female, will be chosen later today . . . and they will likely die in the ensuing chaos and bloodbath awaiting them in the Hunger Games.

I try not to think of that as I walk along the empty streets of the lower district. Many of the buildings are brothels that carry young women whose only chances of survival lay in selling themselves. My mother had once been in one of those -- until she birthed a son fourteen years ago. Then, she was kicked out and had to fend for herself and her newborn child.

She went mad not long after because of the disease coursing through her body. Years of the harlot business will do that to any woman. It is a common consequence here, and it is paid no mind because there are other woes just as worse in this place.

I mind, however, since I was robbed of a mother because of it.

The dark thoughts are vanquished, however, once I catch sight of the sea -- the thin blue-green line that etches across the horizon. Even if nothing awaits me on land other than sorrow and heartache, at least I know that everything awaits me in the depths of that water that shines and glimmers in the sun like a beacon to me. To me, the sea holds possibilities. To me, the sea is the symbol of hope. To me, the sea is everything.

I do not head to the wharf, however. I make my way to the rocks that hide the piece of the sea I like best: the cove. The cove is hidden, isolated -- and thus it is mine.

The basin of salt water awaits me like an old friend. It _is _an old friend, in a way; for years, I have snuck here to drown my head in the water just to have a semblance of normalcy and sanity. Suicidal thoughts never waft through my head -- I am too much of a coward for that -- but I do like my escapes. The water is my most healthy escape.

Truthfully, I cannot imagine a world without the sea. Out _there_, in the district, I am merely poor Finnick Odair -- fatherless boy, harlot's son, and a person who has little chance of surviving because he is growing up amid thorns and brambles which will only smother and bleed him until death -- but, in the water, in that endless blue-green world of seaweed and crashing waves, I am a king among fishes, a man in his own element, a person who is as free as the water in which he swims.

I strip down until my skin is bare to the sunlight wafting down through the cracks and crevasses in the rocks above my head -- and then I plunge into the waiting blue and allow it to swallow me up in its salty maw. It is certain that I will not resurface for a long while . . .

Because this is the world I would choose if I could.

* * *

When I finally retreat from the water sanctuary, my skin is dripping wet, and I am somehow content. The clothes seem wrong as I pull them on, and my worn pants go on first before I reach for my shirt.

That is when I feel the eyes on the back of my head, and I turn, shirt forgotten in my hand.

There, in the shadows of a rocky crevasse, sits a girl with wild brown tangles curtaining her face from my view. She is hugging her knees to her chest, and then she raises her head, dark eyes meeting mine.

I know who she is instantly -- and I scowl in her direction.

"I don't like spies," I say flatly. "I've told you before that this area is off-limits, Annie."

Annie Cresta simply stares at me with those wide eyes -- the color of a brown so dark it is almost black -- and cocks her head to the side as if she were an inquisitive wild bird.

"You don't own this cove," she says, the hint of sarcasm in her voice.

"Well, you should have said something instead of just _watching _me. It's creepy."

_And embarrassing._

She shrugs indifferently. She's always been a weird girl, even when we were just little kids, who never lets traditional conventions stop her from doing anything. Even being her playmate once upon a time had been more adventure than I could handle. "I've seen you naked before," she says. "We used to swim together all the time."

My face flushes. Obviously, she hasn't reached the age yet to feel _self-conscious _over such things. After the age of twelve, things start to change between girls and boys. That's why I haven't stayed friends with her as I once was. It was too . . . awkward. "It's not the same," I say, ducking my head and putting my shirt back on quickly before I get more embarrassed than I already am. "We're older now."

"Says you," she says, jutting out her chin defiantly. "I'm not ever going to grow up."

I laugh coldly. "Good luck with that one," I say, turning away. "Too bad that attitude won't save you from the Reaping. You're twelve now, so you're fair game just as much as I am."

Annie doesn't answer, so I'm left with some satisfaction that her sarcasm and quips have died away.

"See you at the Reaping," I say as a farewell before I give her too much time to think up a rebuttal. I disappear through the rock maze to find my way back to the higher district -- and the main square, where the Reaping will take place in a short period of time.

I have no time to think about Annie Cresta afterward because reality has hit me like a rock again, making my stomach feel sick as I continue to walk forward. I know what awaits me -- but knowledge is not always a gift.

Knowledge can be a curse too.

* * *

By the time I reach it, the square is filled with children and parents from all over the district. My stomach tightens into a knot as I see a young boy, no older than Annie, sob into his father's shoulder. I turn away. My mother will not be waiting in the crowd. She never has been. I am on my own.

I shuffle to stand with the boys from my age group -- fourteen -- and see that many of them have clenched jaws and stalwart postures as if they have become rocks until after this day is over. I don't blame them. The Reaping is a hard day for anyone. A few of the boys nod towards me as I approach because we know each other from our shifts down at the wharf. Familiarity, however, does not bond us. Everyone is on his or her own on the day of the Reaping.

When I am settled in the crowd, I look up to the stage, seeing the traditional glass orbs holding all the hundreds of names of boys and girls across the district. I should feel a little comfort in knowing that I am only one boy out of hundreds, yet I don't. I won't feel any kind of relief until later when I am sitting back in my shack, in the cot I made for myself, with my mother safely alone in the other room.

An interesting sight greets me: a man standing at the bottom of the stage. He is obviously from the Capitol from the white silk of his suit and the shocking white of his hair; everything from the Capitol, even the people, always looks fake rather than genuine. This man is a little different, however, since he looks more like a ghost than a human. I smile a little. At least he's an improvement upon the District 4 representative/escort we had had in the years prior; the woman was insufferable and hideous with a yellow bee's hive of a head. I'm glad to see her gone and replaced with this solemn man who looks as if he could barely crack a smile, let alone laugh like a hyena as the woman had.

Then he takes to the stage just as District 4's mayor, a man I've seen visit the lower district many times in the past, stands and recounts the sad, sad tale of how present-day Panem came to be.

I tune it out since I blame everything on those people who failed all those years before. If their rebellion hadn't gone awry, then the world would be a much different -- much _better _-- place.

The Hunger Games are the price all of us have to pay for the mistakes of the past.

Then the District 4 victors from years' past are introduced by name. There are exactly a handful -- Magda Sonus -- whom I've always seen but never met despite her being Annie's grandmother -- Blarn Werth, Morg Siren, Neva Falls, and Daran Losten. I've only ever seen them from afar since they are a soft-spoken bunch. The Games will do that to anyone, though, so I'm not surprised by how chilly their attitudes are.

The mayor then introduces the white-haired Capitol man, whose names is Jenkins Rock. The man then walks to the podium to speak into the microphone. "Happy Hunger Games," he mumbles in a voice like a cough. My smile grows. I will take solemnity over the Games to enthusiasm any day. "May the odds be ever in your favor."

Then, without further adieu, it is time for the Reaping itself. Jenkins Rock walks over to the glass orb holding the female candidates for tribute. He fishes a slip of paper out and peers down at it.

"Ciara Tidewell," he says in his hoarse voice.

A red-haired girl, a little older than me, breaks away from the crowd and hesitantly walks to the stage. I recognize her by face alone because she is from the lower district too. She is as much an outcast as I am, so I feel pity for her even though I am a little glad that Annie -- a candidate for the first time at age twelve -- was not chosen. People who are related to past victors have a funny way of being chosen in the Reaping, so I'm glad that having Madga Sonus for a grandmother did not mean the gallows for her.

Then, too soon, it is time for the male tribute's name to be announced . . . and my muscles tense instinctively because there is threat in the air from that one slip of paper that is waiting to be read.

I pray in my mind silently. _Please, it can't be me. My mother needs me. I may not like what she has to do, and she may not have been much of a mother to me . . . but I can't let her die alone in that shack._

My prayer means nothing, however, for the name is spoken before I have even had the chance to think, "Amen."

"Finnick Odair," Jenkins Rock states in his strangely expressionless voice. It is as if the name is not a person but an object.

Then I realize that _I _am said object.

Shock ripples through me like the worst possible wave from the ocean. For once, the sensation of a crashing wave doesn't make me feel giddy; it makes me feel _sick._

I am the male tribute for the Sixty-fifth Hunger Games, and there is not a single thing I can do to change it.

* * *

Well, there you have it. This is the start of Finnick's story. I tried to be as sensitive as I could to the issue of the "harlots' quarters," so I'm hoping that none of you will be offended by what I wrote. This is how I imagined Finnick's past to be laid out, so -- if you don't like this scenario -- then feel free to stop reading (even though I'm not a writer to include offensive material in her works; the rating for this IS only Teen, after all).

I'm looking forward to whatever comments or suggestions any of you may have, so please read and review! I will try to post Chapter 2 (The Net) soon (probably next week). Thank you!


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